do you trust the government to? That's all this is doing.

companies curate, but ultimately we're talking about user generated content, whose popularity at some point in life came from the fact that a lot of people chose to engage with it. The only difference now is that you dont need to be some a-list celebrity to get this engagement. A camera, an idea, and a bit of video editing can make you go viral.

even if we stripped down all the engagement algorithms and made it some "pure" HN-style "votes determine curation" (which is a trap in and of itself, but I diagress), you'd be surprised how similar the site layout would look. Arguably even worse because bigger creators get more views and likes by nature of being big.

I don't trust either the government or tech companies. You shouldn't either. You should be free to make your own judgements without either interfering or manipulating you. I assume you're in America, after all?